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... This second truck will head south on Interstate 45 toward Houston. It will move cautiously, mostly cruising in the right lane at 65 mph despite the 75 mph speed limit.

After three and a half hours, the truck will exit the freeway in Greenpoint, a neighborhood in the north of Houston. It will proceed to a second truck depot, where the trailer will again be transferred to a new rig. A different driver will get in and haul the cargo to its final destination a few miles away.

Trucks travel the 200 miles between Dallas and Houston all the time. But there will be something special about the middle leg of this trip: There will be no one in the vehicle.

A startup called Aurora has spent seven years"and hundreds of millions of dollars"preparing for this driverless trip, which it hopes to complete before the end of the year. Last month, I met with Aurora cofounder Sterling Anderson at the company's office in Mountain View, California.

The office has glass-walled conference rooms and row after row of workstations. But it also has some things you won't find at a typical Silicon Valley startup. ...